2 nd S. IX. May 26. '60.] 



NOTES AND QUERIES. 



401 



again, &rc. By Engenius Philalethcs, F.B.S., 

 Author of the Treatise of the Plague, London, 

 8vo. 1722, I find the following account of several 

 old persons in Yorkshire, and evidently written 

 by some person who had seen some of the parties : 



" I remember, when I learnt at School in Holderness, 

 a blind old woman, going about, begging there, called 

 Ursula Chicken, who was one hundred and twenty years 

 old. Tin's might be about 1718: and she lived some 

 years later. 



" In the year 1734 I went to live in the summer at 

 Firbeck, within half a mile of Roche Abbey, about which 

 time there was a stone put up in the Church yard at the 

 head of the graves of a brother and son buried there, 

 whose ages made two hundred and twenty-three years, 

 the one 113 and the other 109 years old, and both of 

 them had lived at Roche Abbey all their time in caves 

 within the Rock. 



" I knew Mr. Philip of Thorner very well, for some 

 years before he died, who was born in Cleveland, in the 

 Korth Riding, towards the latter end of Old Jenkins' * 

 time: and was over at Thorner when he had his picture 

 taken, at which time he was one hundred and sixteen 

 years old, with all his senses perfect ; and who only 7 

 years before, viz. at 109, got his maid with child, and 

 altho' he did not live above a year after he had his pic- 

 ture drawn : yet he might have lived for many years 

 longer, only for an accident which took him off. 



" Thomas Rudyard, "Vicar of Everton in Bedfordshire, 

 dyed in King Charles's time, aged one hundred and forty 

 years and upwards, as appears by the parish Register. 



"York, Jan. 5, 1768. 



" Last week dyed at Burythorp'e, near Malton, Francis 

 Consit, aged one hundred and fifty years. He was main- 

 tained by the parish above GO years, and retained his 

 senses to the very last. This, among many others, is an 

 instance of the healthy situation of Malton and its neigh- 

 bourhood. A few years ago, there were three women, all 

 of 100 years of age, or upwards, who lived in or about 

 Whitwell, met at that town, and danced a Yorkshire 

 reel. 



" There was an old woman at Sutton, about ten years 

 ago, a relation of your Tenant Bosomworths, and died at 

 their house, who was one huudred and seven years old, 

 and walked as upright to the last as a young man of 

 twenty, and also retained her senses: and I have myself 

 known several old people thereabouts of about an hundred 

 years old. Old Robinson's father, at Boltby, lived to an 

 hundred and eight, and he himself when he died was 

 turned ninety-eight. 



" There is now living at Rouillac, in Condomois in 

 France, one John Lasite, who is iu this present year 1768, 

 137 years old, and in good health, and all his senses per- 

 fect. 



" In the year of our Lord one thousand one hundred 

 thirty and nine died in France Johannes de Temporibus, 

 who had lived three hundred sixty and one years, and 

 had been an Halbardeer to the Emperor Charles the 

 Great." 



There is not any name appended to these Notes, 

 but the writer appears to have resided at York. 



Edward Hailstone. 

 Horton Hall. 



* Old Jenkins was 169 years old when he died : both 

 he and Philips were Cleveland men. 



Mhiav $atc£. 

 De Quincey on Johnson. — 



" We recollect a little biographic sketch of Dr. John- 

 son, published immediately after his death, in which, 

 among other instances of desperate tautology, the author 

 quotes the well-known lines from the Doctor's imitation 

 of Juvenal : — 



" ' Let observation, with extensive view, 

 Survey mankind from China to Peru ; ' 

 and contends with some reason that this is saying in 

 effect, — 'Let observation with extensive observation 

 survey mankind extensively.'" — De Quincey, Selections, 

 vol', ii. p. 72. 



De Quincey's " little biographic sketch" is, I 

 fear, apocryphal. The criticism is Coleridge's. 

 See " Table-Talk," p. 340. ed. 1851. Unless, in- 

 deed, Coleridge unconsciously cpioted the " bio- 

 graphic sketch;" and I know not who, at the time 

 of Johnson's death, could have written such a 

 criticism. S. C. 



History always reproduces itself. — The 

 gallant crew of the Water Lily, to say nothing of 

 their numerous imitators who have of late years 

 astonished the natives of every out-of-the-way 

 nook and corner of Europe, by suddenly appear- 

 ing on their rivers, sitting on nothing in particu- 

 lar, and propelling themselves at a pace to which 

 that of the (German) locomotive is chelonian, are 

 not perhaps aware that nearly 250 years ago the 

 passion for dangerous aquatics was as great, if not 

 greater, than their own. We will pass by the ad- 

 venturous voyages of Taylor the Water-Poet, as 

 being more or less professional and pecuniarily 

 productive ; but the following is so thoroughly in 

 the spirit of our modern Jasons that it may be 

 worth the noting : — • 



"At the Court of Greenwich, 27 June, 1619. 



"A Passe for Capten ffrancis Connyngsbee, Capten of 

 the company exercising Amies in the millitary yard in 

 the county of Middlesex, to Goe to Hamborough in a- 

 wherry boate, w th one paire of owers, and to give him 

 leave and permission to appoint a sufficient deputy to in- 

 struct his said company in his absence, and to suffer him 

 to take w th him two" watermen that row him, and a 

 steersman, w ,b necessary provisions not prohibited." — 

 Register of Privy Council. 



Let us trust that efficient life-buoys were 

 amongst the " necessary provisions not prohi- 

 bited." G. H. Kingsley. 



Devil's Own. — This was a crack corps of vo- 

 lunteers, raised at the end of the last century or 

 the beginning of the present. Its proper name 

 was the Temple Association, because its members 

 were all members of either the Middle or the 

 Inner Temple, and a supplemental corps ma- 

 noeuvred on their left, which consisted of their 

 clerks. The uniform was scarlet faced with black 

 velvet. A year or two ago I gave a coloured en- 

 graving of a member of this corps in his uniform 

 to the Hon. Society of the Inner Temple. This 



